Wednesday, February 20, 2008

For Aaron, I'll type this reallllllly sloooooowly ...

*Sigh*.

Once again, The Politic's Aaron Unruh demonstrates his depressing level of illiteracy by mangling the English language here:

Howz to Blog Respectabfully

In Weird News, Canadian “I don’t date teh women” Cynic lectures (and lectures and lectures) Matthew and myself for writing mean-spirited, thoughtless posts, like this one. Instead, he’d like for us to write more thoughtful and substantive posts, like this one!

Are we done here? Oh good.

Now, who will be the first to notice the screeching idiocy in Aaron's prose above, and how he utterly fails to address my fundamental point?

Take your time ... no rush ... it's not a race ...

Why, yes, there it is. See, in my earlier post, my objection was not to Aaron's and Matthew's mean-spiritedness or lack of civility so much as it was to their lack of basic honesty. Heck, read the very first paragraph to see where I was going with that piece (emphasis added):

Greg:

We need to talk. Seriously, we need to talk because you have a major credibility problem over there at TP and, you being the editor, I'd like to hear from you personally as to how you defend the rancid dishonesty oozing out of that site these days.

I would have thought that anyone who was even minimally literate would understand the point I was making and, you know, now that I think about it, I'm betting that Aaron also understands what I was getting at. However, as he is wont to do, Aaron deliberately misunderstood my post just so he wouldn't have to address it, so let me make this painfully clear, Aaron, just so you know what the discussion is about.

Aaron: it's not that you're rude or dismissive or arrogant or uncivil -- it's that you're a liar. Do we understand the point I'm trying to make here? You're simply dishonest in your blogging, in the way you deliberately misrepresent the facts and ignore contradictory evidence. That has nothing to do with courtesy or civility, it has to do with intellectual integrity, of which you have none.

And just to make sure I drive this point home, I don't particularly care what you think of my social graces, given that you're such a infantile dumbass. But if you want to compare the two of us, here's the fundamental difference -- you're a pathological liar, and I'm not.

Want me to prove that? No problem. At last count, this blog has published over 7,000 posts. Yes, that's over seven thousand, most of them by me. I challenge you to go back through those years of output and find a single post where I made a claim that turned out to be factually incorrect and that I didn't correct publicly once that was pointed out to me.

Go ahead, Aaron ... take your time. Surely in over 7,000 posts you can find me being a dishonest wank once, no? So go wild. Invite your friends. Make a party out of it. But make sure you understand the rules, OK?

I'm not talking about being rude or vulgar or sarcastic or downright pissy. I'm talking about dishonesty. And I'll even extend the search parameters to let you pick out any place where I manipulated commenters' submissions, or just plain deleted a post that turned out to be embarrassing.

Let's go, Aaron ... think you're up for the job? As I've already demonstrated in my earlier post, you have no integrity whatsoever. But if you want to make the same charge against me, then I suggest you find some evidence. 7,000+ posts, dude. Surely there's some chicanery in there somewhere, right?

I'll be waiting right here when you get back.

P.S. You know as well as I do what's about to happen, don't you? Aaron will, of course, utterly ignore the parameters of this test and redefine what I've challenged him to do. Because, quite simply, that's how liars work.

But you knew that, right?

HEY, I KNOW, let's make this worth Aaron's time. If Aaron can find a single post in which I made a factually incorrect claim that I didn't publicly correct once it was pointed out to me, I will donate a cool $100 to the local charity of his choice.

Come on, Aaron ... let's see that compassionate conservatism in action. Invest a little time, and make some cash for the needy. It can't possibly be that hard, right?

Right?STILL WAITING ... It's been several hours and, curiously, The Politic's Aaron Unruh still hasn't popped by to provide an inarguable example of dishonesty on my part in all my years of blogging. Perhaps he needs more incentive. $200, Aaron. A cool $200 to the charity of your choice.

23 comments:

The hypocrites really do believe they've won the argument when someone finally tells them to "go fuck themselves," and everything after that, including post after post of numbing stupidity, churlishness (and there's no one more churlish than Aaron Unruh) and outright dishonesty are just movements in an elaborate victory dance.

It's a profoundly psychological issue and one I have a hard time grasping; when someone tells me to fuck off, I'm pretty sure it's because I've not presented my case persuasively or elegantly.

I've been in the same discussion at 43rd lately, these idiots are, at the very base level, liars and cowards.

I've challenged them with public debates, web debates, anything I can think of and the responses I get are inherently illogical and full of fallacies.

Recently I got into it with my local wingnut idiot about an issue pertaining to coercion cases in regards to abortion. I stated that the law already protects against it and that the anti-abortion people don't have the numbers to justify new legislation for this specific case. Instead of answering the challenge, he changed the subject and/or focused on my profane language.

You won't win this unless you can force them into revealing themselves to their minions as the dishonest hacks that they really are.

Good luck with that, I'm finally starting to get through to some of the locals here.

focused on my profane languageThat is the thing we should work on. They get really ticked when you refuse to take the swear bait. Usually they have to wait for one of their trolls who will swear and try to get you to do the same. Then of course, they delete all the bait!

You won't win this unless you can force them into revealing themselves to their minions as the dishonest hacks that they really are.Hence trying to avoid swearing.

Note how they have made "liberal" or "left" into practically a swear word.

We need non swear words to refer to them. You can't even refer to "conservatards" since it gives a channel changing opportunity to open the sneering "political correctness" debate.

I've liked "fascist" to refer to them, but they typically come up with accusations of trivializing the Holocaust(!). But they must have gotten worried because lately we see the doublespeak conflating fascism with socialism. Even Hitler was apparently a "socialist". We used to understand that the "German Democratic Republic" was East Germany and was not in fact a democracy at all, but now it seems National Socialism must really have been socialism.

We need better turns of phrase to insult and at the same time give no openings.

I am reminded of an old Star Trek, where some of the crew swapped with their evil counterparts (where Spock had a beard). They managed to get back, and they wondered what happened with the evil versions on the "real" ship. It seemed the good guys could pretend to be bad, but the bad guys could no fake being anything but what they were.

So it is for us. We can easily clean up our language, but they can't grow brains, or hearts.

The fundamental problem is that their minds can never be changed. They have staked out a position - without the aid of reason - and invested ego into it. The reason they're ardent right-wingers (not to be mistaken with people who just buy into the TV ads) is because they have the kind of inflexible mind that enjoys the certainty of authoritarianism. Doubt is their enemy, so they entertain none.

I think my point is that it's like arguing with an intellectually stunted brick wall. You're never going to win, and they'll just bog you down with their stupidity until you give up in exasperation.

The crime is that they will never even know how stupid they are, since they lack the ability to doubt and, thus, to self-reflect. I've given up fighting comment wars with the 43rd fighting keyboardists for this reason.

But do keep their names in mind when we're building a ship to launch all the telephone sanitizers into space.

We can easily clean up our language, but they can't grow brains, or hearts.

Which really means that there's no point talking to them at all, except to tell them to fuck off, particularly when they engage in that grotesque defamation of their adversaries.

Seriously, cleaning up the language just usually results, with most righties, in an interminable "debate" that goes absolutely nowhere, except to the banal conclusion of "agreeing to disagree" which is where political and cultural adversaries start off in the first place, anyway.

You can't dialogue with people who won't argue in good faith, no matter how polite, reasoned and factual you are. And lack of good faith is what defines the Right these days. It probably always has, but we now live in a period in which conservative authorities themselves (with precious few exceptions) seem rather indifferent or shameless when it comes to the issue of good faith.

Seriously, cleaning up the language just usually results, with most righties, in an interminable "debate" that goes absolutely nowhere, except to the banal conclusion of "agreeing to disagree" which is where political and cultural adversaries start off in the first place, anyway.Hmm, I see your point. I didn't look at it that way.

I was thinking more along the lines of insults that cannot be attacked except as being insults.

Or simply tell them they are arguing in bad faith. Then laugh at them.

You're right about not wasting time on them. Don't give them the ammo "we refuse to talk with them at all", instead they are left with "we refuse to carry on when they are arguing in bad faith" which is most of the time. Or "we call them names. Waaa". or leave them blubbering that "we made fun of them. Waaaa". But if they can't say "he told me to fuck off", they're left with "he told me I have no idea what I'm talking about and he won't stay and keep rehashing my silly talking points".

They're all about keeping up appearances, right? They need to be able to point at something to claim they must be right. I just force them into something where they will have to try to change the channel, then refuse to let them change it. They either go away or send the swearing trolls "we have to let them speak, freedom and all, but I wouldn't word it like them..."

My favourite example? In the abortion debates, if suzanne shows up, I always ask why suzanne has never answered whether she supports or condones doctor murder. I have yet to see her stick around on any thread where I have demanded an answer. Try to change the channel? I just keep asking the same thing. Not repeatedly, but every time she shows up again. She goes away every time.